E-mail and social media are integral to most businesses with an online presence, but at what cost? According to a survey by software company Harmon.ie and polling researchers uSamp, distractions caused by social media, e-mail, and poorly designed office technology cost businesses over $10,000 a year per worker—for a 1,000 worker company, that’s more than $10 million a year.
“The issue isn’t whether you’re working, it’s whether you lose your focus when something pops up on your screen,” says David Lavenda, vice president at Harmon.ie, based in Milpitas, Calif.
Nearly half of the workers surveyed said they couldn’t go more than 15 minutes without a disruption, and more than half of U.S. workers waste at least an hour on tech-related interruptions. Badly organized electronic files don’t help either, as workers waste about 2.5 hours a week searching for missing documents.
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